How You Remember Him
When I tell people I listen to Frank
Zappa they look at me oddly and with some suspicion that I may may be
a flake. Anyone listening to that kind of music might be
unquestionably degenerate, inferior and possibly wicked. Some of us
are, true.
Most people know his of his sophomoric
(read as: STUPID) songs like “Don't Eat the Yellow Snow” or
“Valley Girls.” Those who have listened to his other stuff look
like a dog that has just heard a toucan for the first time and tilt
their heads in a questionable manner.
When I first heard it I thought it
crap. My brother had been trying to learn the guitar licks off the
album and I suffered with it in the background. But like I tell
everyone else, it can grow on you.
There are songs that have wonderful
concordance. Songs you can easily hum too and enjoy. Donny and
Marie's “And They Call it Puppy Love” could be an example of
concordance. DIScordant music is something entirely different. On a
first hearing it's annoying, unapproachable and weird. An analogy
to a racist Asian joke would be, “it sounds like you threw a
bunch of forks and spoons down a staircase.”
There are some of Zappa's songs that I
still can't get my head around nor be listen to much. They are way
too difficult to comprehend.
I finally got some understanding of his more bizarre pieces though. I had recently seen an interview with Frank and how
he managed to hear melodies within his music and
that weird genre called Concrete Musique. Concrete Musique is
organized sound using anything that can create it. You have to be
born with one of those Idiot Savant minds to understand it, to see
and appreciate the order that IS inside it. Frank claimed he could
“hear it” and then spent most of his life writing it. For you
and I, there is no order. We're far too simple-minded to “get it.”
These guys were formulating rocket trajectories while we are barely
learning to use our fingers to count.
I don't attend many concerts anymore.
The music that's out there now, most of it I don't care about. Also,
any 70's mainstream band that floats around here charges way too much
and I really, really have to love them to fork over the dough to get
a ticket. I can thank the Eagles for that one. They had re-formed
and went on the “Hell Freezes Over” tour and stopped at Great
Woods. The lawn tickets for that show were over $100 and I thought,
“To hell with you, Eagles!”
But, I still attend concerts put
on by Project/Object. This band is basically Frank Zappa w/o Frank
Zappa. His old bandmates are still touring, albeit the smaller
venues. Half of those bandmates are gray haired and half the
audience attending them are so as well...me included. And out of all
the bands that may come by Gilette, Comcast/Great Woods/Tweeter or
whatever they call it now, I make an effort to see Project/Object.
Ever listen to NPR? That classical
music station? I have, rarely. I call classical music “dancing
mouse music.” Why? Because like all kids who grew up on TV
cartoons, my first introduction to it were from classical pieces
inserted into Bugs Bunny cartoons. The Barber of Seville comes to
mind.
Anyway, when Frank died, a few regular
stations interrupted their playlists to announce it. NPR spent three
to five hours going over everything Frank did in his career. That
sort of surprised me that a bunch of stuffy, up-snooted Classical
music lovers, like Ron Della Chiesa, whose voice you'd instantly
recognized if you had listened to NPR, did speak of Frank for hours
on end.
I like some classical, but am no way
educated in it to speak of it. But it was a nice surprise to hear
those who are, gush over Frank.
And What You Didn't Know
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